Medical masks, various types of disinfectants, empty streets and impatiently waiting for news every day. The state of emergency was declared on 16th of March in RA because of pandemic COVID-19. The situation in the whole world is used to call “Quarantine” (Italian: quarantina), which was named by Italians in the 14th century, as it was declared the state of emergency for 40 days. In Armenia it is almost one month that people have been isolated at homes, going out only in the case of urgent needs, according to the order of commandant, and Educational Complex of Police of RA like other educational institutions implements distance learning.

         We had an interview with a psychologist, a lecturer at the Chair of Social disciplines and Psychology of College of Educational Complex of Police of RA, police captain Mariam Karapetyan on distance tutoring, arranging the leisure of learners, overcoming the feeling of boredom during the days of isolation. 

 -What kind of peculiarities do you see in distance tutoring?

-To my mind, this is a new platform, through which our specialists have the opportunity to use their professional high qualities. 

-Learners of Educational Complex of Police of RA serve day and night, asking the citizens to stay at home. Practical advice on how to communicate with citizens, taking into account situational peculiarities. 

-Related to communication skills with citizens it is prefered to use listening methods, be open and impartial, hear concretely what has been said, show understanding of the problem and comment the given task. I advise revising our courses of communication skills, where all peculiarities were studied. 

Taking into account the given situation, the tension of people can cause conflict situations. The best way of solution is to neutralize them in time, and the best way to correct is to use the skills of self-regulation. For example, in the preliminary level, we may raise the conflict from an emotional stage into intellectual. In order to calm our emotional tension, we should give ourselves clear questions such as: where am I, what I am doing: in this way we are concentrating on our mind, and emotional tension decreases. 

It is important to implement each kind of work with pleasure to be emotionally quiet, we should remember that our actions are kind of exchange of energy: we should try to use the provided time fruitfully and accept each decision with a clear mind and peaceful soul. 

-To your opinion, what are the reasons of boredom and inconvenience?

-Sleeping late, lifestyle without regime can cause tiredness, laziness and weakness of the immune system. It is normal as an organism adapts to the strange, new lifestyle: the energy distribution is changed, while before we had another variant of daylife, and now we have to change the process. 

-Practical advice to all of us and especially the learners of Educational Complex, how to overcome the inconvenience and use the isolation to arrange leisure properly.

-Learners should divide the day into intellectual and physical activities, which improve psychological health, do what you always wanted to do but because of some reasons didn’t manage. Read qualitative literature: there are various types of professional, fiction books (electronic and audit). Motivate yourself with goals but the actions for your goals should be divided into parts. Some of you may implement research works, some may read books, some may work on additional weight through physical active exercises: running, active sport exercises, etc. It is proved that physical activity is not only healthy but also makes mood higher, activates energy. 

In order to neutralize mood collapses and alarm, we should provide less time for watching the news. Of course, all of us are in an unusual situation and have necessity to get information but we may have just one hour per day for this, and we should use media, which avoids of emotional comments, is objective and official. Think about positive images, make visualizations. Emotions and thoughts of people always get information: we always think about our good, bad, right or wrong actions, which increases our alarm. I must mention that our brain has huge opportunities: we may improve our psychological status through images. 

-What values should be reviewed during these days?

    -I think this situation will promote to see our surrounding reality in a different way, quietly, revise our values, pay attention to nature’s beauty, communicate with family members, children, learn languages, study literature, be in self-development. In such conditions, it is prefered to pay attention to tolerance, which means to be patient and tolerant toward other person’s lifestyle, vision, traditions. We should remember that surrounding people also live emotions like we do and are in the same situation. 

Interview was conducted by inspector of

International cooperation and IT division of

Educational Complex of Police of RA,

police senior lieutenant Ani Ghukasyan